The Institute of Systems Immunology was established within the Hamburg Centre for Translational Immunology (HCTI) in 2021 at the Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg (ZMNH) under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Immo Prinz.

Research focus

Our goal is to understand the immunological chances and challenges emerging from the vast diversity of > 10e15 potential adaptive immune receptor combinations in T cells and B cells. Therefore, we have developed systems for high-throughput sequencing of T cell receptor repertoires, which we use to monitor T cell dynamics during immune reactions to pathogens and in the course of autoimmune disease. In particular, we are interested in γδ-T cells, whose role in immune responses is still largely unclear.

The next step of our research focuses on systems to identify specific antigens based on αβ und γδ TCR sequence information.